We have written extensively about government overreach in the areas of education and public health; the Obama Administration is reinterpreting federal laws to force schools to let biological males who claim to be female use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms at school. The administration also is forcing hospitals and doctors to offer “gender transition” services–something that flies in the face of many doctors’ professional and conscientious convictions.
In between all of this, federal officials also have been stumping in favor of gay and transgender activists at school graduations.
The head of the federal Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Vanita Gupta, told New York University School of Law graduates on May 19,
And we see this gap [between what laws guarantee and what people experience] in efforts to deny LGBTI individuals – especially transgender men and women – the respect they deserve and the protection our laws guarantee. And let me add this – efforts like House Bill 2 in North Carolina [requiring people to use public restrooms corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificates] not only violate the laws that govern our nation, but also the values that define us as a people.
Earlier, on May 14, she told University of Minnesota Law School graduates,
Even after the Supreme Court’s landmark gay marriage decision last year in Obergefell v. Hodges that guaranteed all people ‘equal dignity in the eyes of the law,’ we see new efforts to deny LGBTI individuals the respect they deserve and the protection our laws guarantee. And let me add this – efforts like House Bill 2 in North Carolina [requiring people to use public restrooms corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificates] not only violate the laws that govern our nation, but also the values that define us as a people.
On Monday, May 16, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch gave the commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, in which she said,
[F]rom Bunker Hill to Appomattox and from Seneca Falls to Selma; from the Emancipation Proclamation to the 19th Amendment and from the civil rights laws of the 1960s to Obergefell v. Hodges [which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide] – we have won these and so many other victories only because people of good will and moral conviction refused to stand aside when there was more to be done.
U.S. Attorney General Lynch’s words effectively equate the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to nullify state marriage laws nationwide with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and Assistant Attorney General Gupta seems to think it is patently un-American to believe men should use the men’s room and women should use the women’s room.
In the eyes of this administration letting people use the restroom of their choice is not some minor issue; it is a civil right. That comes as a surprise to many people, considering the many other problems plaguing the world today, but these officials’ words and actions seem to be clear indicators of the federal government’s priorities.
